Two ISPs have won their court battle against an anti-piracy group which had demanded that they block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay. Yesterday a judge at the Antwerp Commercial Court rejected the blocking demands and labeled them "disproportionate". The Belgian Anti-Piracy Federation has reacted angrily, accusing the ISPs of siding with The Pirate Bay.

Faced with a huge BitTorrent site that simply refuses to comply, give in, or die, anti-piracy groups have been trying other methods to take The Pirate Bay offline.

With 2009’s “guilty” verdict in hand, a common theme in recent times has been to put pressure on ISPs to block the site, but most are refusing to comply.

Similar negotiations have been going on in Belgium between two ISPs, Belgacom and Telenet, and the Belgian Anti-Piracy Foundation (BAF) for some time now, but reached deadlock.

“There should be an efficient and quick procedure to be able to act fast against illegal foreign sites. We’ve tried negotiating with the internet providers for over a year, but to no avail,” said BAF’s Christophe Van Mechelen. “A list of illegal foreign sites was also sent to the public prosecutor’s office, but was classified without result.”

Inevitably the negotiations with the ISPs transformed into legal action and this week a court was left with a decision – should it officially order the service providers to block the world’s most resilient BitTorrent site?

For the Belgian Anti-Piracy Foundation (BAF) the outcome was bad news.

Yesterday the Antwerp Commercial Court refused to order ISPs Belgacom and Telenet to make the The Pirate Bay inaccessible to their subscribers and labeled such a blocking requirement as “disproportionate”.

BAF reacted angrily against the ISPs, stating that by taking the side of The Pirate Bay they had effectively given protection to “an illegal site”. The ISPs, however, said that the decision to block websites is not theirs to make.

“It is not the role of Telenet to decide which sites should be available or not to our users,” said a spokeswoman for the ISP. “As a service provider, this is not within our competence.”

Belgacom also defended its stance in a comment. “The judge considered that immediate action to block this site was not necessary and that BAF’s application was disproportionate to the offense, especially since the site has existed for several years and that the request comes only now.”